


Day Fourteen: Seemingly Innocuous Person/Object/Lies

by Euphorion



Series: Writober [14]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Oikawa Tooru Wears Glasses, i love that that's a tag on its own, implied magic, yeah this is just them hanging out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 15:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8333674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: Iwaizumi sighed and checked his watch. Oikawa was late. Oikawa was always late, but Iwaizumi knew Oikawa was always late and he’d left five minutes late specifically so that he wouldn’t be standing around waiting for him like he was every other time he’d ever made plans with him, i. e. at least once a week since he was five.





	

**Author's Note:**

> You can probably maybe read this one on its own but Oikawa also showed up in [day eleven](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8298301) and it wouldn't hurt to just be caught up on most of the haikyuu-centric fics in this series

Iwaizumi sighed and checked his watch. Oikawa was late. Oikawa was always late, but Iwaizumi knew Oikawa was always late and he’d left five minutes late specifically so that he wouldn’t be standing around waiting for him like he was every other time he’d ever made plans with him, i. e. at least once a week since he was five.

He checked both directions, but there was no sign of him. He took out his phone and flipped it open, about to send him a pissed off text, and then Oikawa threw an arm around him, peering at his phone. “Who are you texting, Iwa-chan?” he asked, sing-song. “Should I be jealous?”

Iwaizumi spat a curse and almost dropped his phone, shrugging off his arm. “You—how—you weren’t _here_ a minute ago.”

Oikawa blinked innocently at him. “Of course I was,” he said. “I just came up the road. You were too absorbed in your phone to notice.”

Iwaizumi squinted suspiciously at him. _No_ , he thought, _I wasn’t_. But he didn’t push it. Oikawa was all smiles, but there had been a tired, almost bitter edge to his eyes for a few weeks, one that Iwaizumi had hoped to never see again. It was the way he used to look when he would stay up all night watching videos of plays, when he obsessed over the ever-narrowing skill gap between himself and Kageyama. Oikawa was goodness and kindness layered thick and heavy over desperate jealousy, sorrow, and rage, and the tiredness in his eyes now was the first sign that those layers were thinning. 

Iwaizumi’s job—one that he had taken freely upon himself the first time he saw Oikawa cry—was to figure out why, and stop it from happening. He scowled. “What are you wearing?”

Oikawa looked down at himself. He was wearing his glasses, and a big blue sweater with elbow patches, and what looked like red and black plaid pants. “I’m being comfy,” he said defensively.

Iwaizumi narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re being comfy. You, who takes a hundred years to get ready because one of the strands of your hair might be out of place and—” he adopted a high, simpering voice that he was well aware sounded nothing like his friend, “ _—Iwa-chan, what if we see some of my fans—_ ”

Oikawa shook his head at him slow, as if gravely disappointed. “This mockery,” he said. “This unfeeling cruelty to a boy who is just trying to get into the spirit of autumn, who is attempting to go out with his best friend without being mobbed—”

Iwaizumi squinted. “Oh,” he said, “I see, so you’re _not_ trying to look attractive. Well in that case you won’t mind if I—”

He lunged for Oikawa, running both of his hands into his hair and messing it up as thoroughly as he could before his shrieking friend fought him off. He relented, and Oikawa scrambled to keep his balance and spun to face him again. His glasses had come free, hanging crooked off his face, and his hair was a sideways tangle, falling over one of his laughing, outraged eyes. “Iwa-chan!” he cried, breathless and accusatory.

Iwaizumi completely failed to stop himself from muttering, “oh, that is _fucking_ unfair.”

Oikawa pushed his glasses up his face. “Unfair?” he demanded. “You’re the one who attacked me. Unprovoked, I might add. What, exactly, is unfair?”

Iwaizumi closed his eyes, despairing for himself and his dignity. “Just—nothing. Nothing.” He shook his head. Oikawa never really bought full lies, and the full truth was not an option. “Most people put work into looking more attractive, not less.”

Oikawa ran a hand through his hair, trying to settle it again, and Iwaizumi had to resist the urge to stop him. “I never said I was trying to look unattractive,” he said with a sniff. “That was your boorish assumption. I wouldn’t bother, it’s impossible.”

Iwaizumi rolled his eyes, about to retort now that they were back on less treacherous ground, but Oikawa’s sweater sleeve fell to his elbow as he fixed his hair, and his attention was caught by two things: Oikawa’s wrist looked chapped, almost raw, his skin reddened in a strange, geometric pattern, like a square net; and he was wearing a bracelet—a loose, knotted string with several gemstone beads tied at even intervals.

He frowned. “What happened to your wrist?”

Oikawa’s eyes flickered away and back, a split second of motion. He was a good liar, but that eye movement always gave him away. It was like he could deliver a lie while looking Iwaizumi in the eyes so long as he’d already thought of what it would be, but if he had to think of one on the spot he had to look around, pluck it out of the air around Iwaizumi’s head instead. 

He watched him hook it like a fish, reel it in, open his mouth to deliver. “Oh,” he said. “I—I don’t know, I must have—”

Iwaizumi sighed, cutting him off. “Don’t bother. You don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me.” He started off down the road. “C’mon. We missed the showing we were going to see, but if we hurry we might catch the next one.” He was exaggerating—they had plenty of time—but just then he didn’t want to keep messing around with him, didn’t want to pretend that everything was cool.

There was a pause, and then Oikawa trotted to catch up. “Iwa-chan.”

Iwaizumi said nothing. He wasn’t angry that Oikawa would lie to him. Oikawa lied to him all the time, in big and small ways—about how hard he worked, about how he felt about people, about his insecurity and his pride. But. He didn’t like this lie. This lie was part of the bigger thing, the thing that had set Oikawa’s self-destructive internal machine to work, and this lie and all the others were making Iwaizumi’s job much harder.

Oikawa was silent for a full block, and then halfway down the next he said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet, “please don’t be angry with me.”

Iwaizumi stopped, and turned to look at him. He’d fixed his glasses and mostly his hair, and he was toying with the long, thin bracelet at his wrist, pulling it against the reddened pattern there again and again. “I,” he said, “I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want you to think less of me.” He smiled, but it was wrong, empty, and he didn’t meet Iwaizumi’s eyes. “It’s selfish, and unfair, but sometimes that’s who I am.”

Iwaizumi looked at him for another long minute, and then kicked him lightly in the ankle. “Sometimes you’re an idiot who won’t let in the people who care about you,” he corrected, “but I’m not going to force you to tell me what’s going on. Just.” He reached out and took Oikawa’s hand, sliding his sleeve up and running his thumb lightly over the web-shaped pattern. “Is it hurting you? Whatever this is?”

He glanced up as he asked. Oikawa was watching him, his eyelids heavy. “No,” he said, soft, and there was no flicker in his gaze. “No, it isn’t hurting me.”

Iwaizumi swallowed. “Okay.” He realized he was still running his thumb over Oikawa’s pulse point and stopped as naturally as possible, letting go of his hand and stepping back with a cough. “If it helps,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets, rolling his shoulders upward. Retreating into his shell. “I don’t think there’s anything you could say or do that would make me think less of you.”

Oikawa blinked at him, and Iwaizumi smirked. “I already think you’re the absolute worst.”

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing much happens in this one huh


End file.
